The history of the Jews in Croatia dates back to at least the 3rd century, although little is known of the community until the 10th and 15th centuries. According to the 1931 census, the community numbered 21,505 members, and it is estimated that on the eve of the Second World War the population was around 25,000 people.[3] Most of the population was murdered during the Holocaust that took place on the territory of the Nazi puppet state called the Independent State of Croatia. After the war, half of the survivors chose to settle in Israel, while an estimated 2,500 members continued to live in Croatia.[2] According to the 2011 census, there were 509 Jews living in Croatia, but that number is believed to exclude those born of mixed marriages or those married to non-Jews. More than 80 percent of the Zagreb Jewish Community were thought to fall in those two categories.
Jewish traders and merchants first arrived in what is now northern Croatia in the first centuries of the Common Era, when Roman law allowed free movement throughout the Empire.[5][6] Archaeological excavations in Osijek reveal a synagogue dating to the 3rd century AD,[7] and an excavation in Solin discovered Jewish graves from the same period. A Jewish community in Split was found to have also emerged in the 3rd century. In the 7th century Jews sought refuge in Diocletian's Palace after the Dalmatian capital Salona was overrun by the Avars. A synagogue was built into the western wall of the palace in the 16th century, and descendants of the Salona refugees are still living in the area.
Early Middle Ages
One of the oldest written sources, which could indicate the presence of Jews on Croatian territory, comes from the letter of the vizier Hasdai ibn Shaprut, which was sent to King Joseph of the Khazars. This letter from the 10th century refers to the "King of the Gebalim - Slavs", see the article Miholjanec, whose country borders the country of the Hungarians. The King sent a delegation, which included "Mar (Aramaic:"Lord") Shaul and Mar Joseph", to the Caliph Abd-ar-Rahman III of Córdoba. Delegates reported that mar Hisdai Amram came to the Khazar king's palace from the country where the "Gebalim" lived. In Hebrew "gebal" means "mountain". Hungarian sources reported, that a vineyard near Miholjanec was named "master of the mountain". Croatia is also represented as a country of "Gebalim" in a letter of Bishop Gauderich addressed to Anastasius as a co-author of the legend of Cherson in the 9th century.[8][9][10][11]
Late Middle Ages
The Jewish communities of Croatia flourished in the 13th and 14th centuries, with the communities enjoying prosperity and peaceful relations with their Croatian neighbors.[12]
This ended in 1456, when Jews, along with most non-Catholic Croats, were forced out. There followed 200 years where there are no records of Jews in Croatia.[12] In those 200 years Jews from Croatia were usually on diplomatic missions to Bosnia on behalf of the Republic of Venice.[13]
The 15th century saw increasing persecution of Jews in areas of Spain retaken in the Reconquista. From 1492 onward, Jewish refugees fleeing the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions arrived in Ottoman territories, including the Balkan provinces of Macedonia and Bosnia. Some of these refugees found their way to Croatia, in particular to Split and Dubrovnik, on the Dalmatian coast.[5]
Habsburg rule
In the 17th century, Jews were still not permitted to settle in northern Croatia. Jews traveled to Croatia as traveling merchants, mostly from neighboring Hungary. They were generally permitted to stay only a few days.[6] In the early part of the century, the Croatian Parliament ("Sabor") confirmed its ban on permanent settlement when a Jewish family attempted to settle in Đurđevac.[6]
In 1753, although still officially banned, Jews were allowed to settle in Bjelovar, Koprivnica and Varaždin, by General Beck, the military commander of the Varaždin region. In order to streamline the treatment of Jews in Croatia, Count Franjo Patačić, by order of the Royal Office in Varaždin, wrote a comprehensive report advocating Jewish permanent residence in Croatia on the basis that "most of them are merchants, and trade makes towns flourish".[6]
The prohibition against Jewish settlement in northern Croatia lasted until 1783, until the 1782 Edict of Tolerance issued by the Habsburg Monarch Emperor Joseph II went into effect. Jews were subsequently allowed to settle in Croatia, but were not allowed to own land or engage in any trade protected by a guild, and were not allowed to work in agriculture.[6] Despite these measures, Jews settled in Zagreb and Varaždin.
In 1840, the Sabor (parliament) voted to "gradually" allow full equality for the Jews, and over the next 33 years there was gradual progress.
Possibility to buy freedom through payment of a "tolerance tax"
1859
Jews allowed to buy houses and land
1873
Full legal equality
In 1867 the new Zagreb Great Synagogue was inaugurated and Rabbi Dr. Hosea Jacobi became Chief Rabbi of Zagreb. In 1873, Ivan Mažuranić signed the decree allowing for the full legal equality of Jews and, as with other faiths, state funds were made available for community institutions.[14]
By 1880, there were 13,488 Jews in Croatia, rising to 20,032 by 1900. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were 21 Jewish communities in Croatia, the largest being in Zagreb (3,000 people) and Osijek (3,000 people). The Jewish community of Croatia became highly successful and integrated. By 1900, 54% of Zagreb Jews and 35% of all Croatian Jews spoke Croatian as their mother tongue. Despite their small numbers, Jews were disproportionately represented in industrial and wholesale business in Croatia, and in the timber and food industries. Several Jewish families were amongst Croatia's wealthiest families. Despite the apparent wealth, most Jews were middle class, and many second generation Croatian Jews were attracted to the fields of law and medicine.
Prior to World War II, the Croatian, and especially the Zagreb Jewish community, was the preeminent community of Yugoslavia. In 1940 there were about 11,000 Jews living in Zagreb: about 76% were Ashkenazi Jews, 5% Sephardi Jews, 17% unaffiliated and the remainder being religious.[6]
Concentration camps in Yugoslavia during World War II.
On 25 March 1941, Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, an ethnic Serb, signed Yugoslavia's alliance with the Axis Powers under the Tripartite Pact. The decision was unpopular in many parts of the country,[15] and massive demonstrations took place in the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade. Prince Paul was overthrown, and a new government under Peter II and Dušan Simović took power. The new government withdrew its support for the Axis but did not repudiate the Tripartite Pact. Nevertheless, Axis forces, led by Nazi Germany, invaded Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941.
With Germany and Italy's support, the Croatian ultra-nationalist Ustaše movement came to power in the newly established puppet state called the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). The Ustaše were notoriously antisemitic,[16] and wasted little time in instituting anti-Jewish legislation and persecuting the Jews under their control. Like Nazis forced Jews to wear armbands with a yellow Star of David, the Croatian Ustaše regime forced Jews to wear armbands with the letter "Ž" for "Židov", the word for “Jew” in Croatian.[17] NDH Interior Minister Andrija Artuković said in 1941 upon the proclamation of ethnic laws: "The Government of NDH shall solve the Jewish question in the same way as the German Government did".[18] Already in April 1941, the Ustaše and Volksdeutsche burned the synagogue and destroyed the Jewish cemetery in Osijek,[19] while the Ustaše mayor of Zagreb, Ivan Werner, ordered the destruction of the main Zagreb synagogue, which was completely razed in 1942[20] The Ustaše set up a number of concentration camps with the most notorious being Jasenovac in which 20,000 Jews were murdered.[21]
During the Holocaust, a total of 29–31,000 Jews in the NDH were killed, around 75% by the Ustaše and around 25% by the Germans. This constituted 79 percent of the country's pre-war Jewish population,[22] including 20,000 of the 23,000-25,000 Croatian Jews.[23] Only 5,000 Croatian Jews survived the war, most as soldiers in Josip Broz Tito's National Liberation Army or as exiles in the Italian-occupied zone. After Italy capitulated to the Allied Powers, the surviving Jews lived in free Partisan territory.[24]
When Yugoslavia was liberated in 1945, Croatia became part of the new Yugoslav federation, which eventually became the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Post-war community
After 1945, atheism became the official policy of Yugoslavia and Croatia, and because of this there were no rabbis in Croatia until the mid-1990s. Most Croatian Jews identified as Yugoslavs, or as Serbs or Croats.[25] After the founding of Israel, about half of the survivors renounced their Yugoslav citizenship as a prerequisite for leaving the country and acquiring Israeli citizenship. Those who opted to leave for Israel signed a document by which they left all property, land, and other unmovable property to Yugoslavia.
The post-war Jewish community of Croatia became highly assimilated, with 80% of Zagreb's 1,500 Jews either born into mixed marriages, or married to non-Jews. In 1991, there were approximately 2,000 Jews in Croatia.
The Jewish community in Croatia is organized into ten Jewish "municipalities" (Croatian: Židovska općina) in the cities of Čakovec, Daruvar, Dubrovnik, Koprivnica, Osijek, Rijeka, Slavonski Brod, Split, Virovitica, Zagreb. Since 2005, Zagreb also has a separate Jewish organization named "Bet Israel", formed by a splinter group in the original organization led by Ivo Goldstein and others. A Chabad organization is also registered in Zagreb and held most Jewish activities around the year.
Jews are officially recognized as an autonomous national minority, and as such, they elect a special representative to the Croatian Parliament, shared with members of eleven other national minorities.[27]
The Jewish communities of the Croatian coast of Dalmatia date back to the 14th century CE. A letter from 1326 refers to a Jewish doctor in Dubrovnik. The community remained small throughout the years (100-330 members), although the community distinguished itself in trade and medicine. The community was augmented from 1421 by refugees fleeing increasing persecution in Spain, and then from 1492 as Jews fled the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions.[28]
The Jewish synagogue in Split is more than 500 years old and is the third oldest active synagogue in Europe. Except for a brief period during WW2 the synagogue has been in continuous use since it was established. Although there is no rabbi in Split, the 100-member strong community conducts regular Friday evening Shabbatservices (the Jewish sabbath) and a kosher meal is prepared and served to all who come. The synagogue is open every day from 9 am until around 2 pm for tours. Although the interior of the synagogue was restored in 1996 the interior is from the 18th and 19th Centuries.
Antisemitism, based on the attitudes of the Catholic Church and on Venetian law (which applied at the time), was a constant issue for the community, which lived in ghettos in Dubrovnik and Split. When Dalmatia was occupied by Napoleonic forces, the Jews attained legal equality for the first time.[28] In 1814, when the Austrian Empire annexed Dalmatia, legal equality was again withdrawn. Jews were granted legal equality under Croatian law in the mid 19th century.[6]
The Ustaše, also known by anglicised versions Ustasha or Ustashe, was a Croatian fascist and ultranationalist organization active, as one organization, between 1929 and 1945, formally known as the Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement. Its members assisted in assassinating King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in 1934, and went on to perpetrate The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia, killing hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma as well as Bosniak Muslims and Croatian political dissidents during World War II in Yugoslavia.
The Independent State of Croatia was a World War II-era puppet state of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. It was established in parts of occupied Yugoslavia on 10 April 1941, after the invasion by the Axis powers. Its territory consisted of most of modern-day Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as some parts of modern-day Serbia and Slovenia, but also excluded many Croat-populated areas in Dalmatia, Istria, and Međimurje regions.
The Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia was the systematic persecution of Serbs committed during World War II by the fascist Ustaše regime in the Nazi German puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia between 1941 and 1945. It was carried out through executions in death camps, as well as through mass murder, ethnic cleansing, deportations, forced conversions, and war rape. This genocide was simultaneously carried out with the Holocaust in the NDH as well as the genocide of Roma, by combining Nazi racial policies with the ultimate goal of creating an ethnically pure Greater Croatia.
Full diplomatic relations between Croatia and Israel were established on April 9, 1997 following Croatia's independence from SFR Yugoslavia. Croatia has an embassy in Tel Aviv and honorary consulates in Ashdod, Caesarea, Jerusalem and Kfar Shmaryahu. Israel has an embassy in Zagreb. Relations between the two countries are described as friendly and highly cooperative. In recent years, Croatia and Israel intensified bilateral relations and cooperation in the field of defence and security. Croatia is one of the countries Israel occasionally turns to inside the EU to advocate on its behalf and it generally abstains or votes with Israel on key EU votes at the UN. Israeli president Reuven Rivlin described Croatia in 2019 as "Israel's strong ally in the EU, the UN and other multilateral organizations."
The Jadovno concentration camp was a concentration and extermination camp in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during World War II. Commanded by a member of the Ustaše Militia Juraj Rukavina, it was the first of twenty-six concentration camps in the NDH during the war. Established in a secluded area about 20 kilometres (12 mi) from the town of Gospić, it held thousands of Serbs and Jews over a period of 122 days from May to August 1941. Inmates were usually killed by being pushed into deep ravines located near the camp. Estimates of the number of deaths at Jadovno range from 10,000 to 68,000, mostly Serbs. The camp was closed on 21 August 1941, and the area where it was located was later handed over to the Kingdom of Italy and became part of Italian Zones II and III. Jadovno was replaced by the larger Jasenovac concentration camp and its extermination facilities.
The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia involved the genocide of Jews, Serbs and Romani within the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist puppet state that existed during World War II, led by the Ustaše regime, which ruled an occupied area of Yugoslavia including most of the territory of modern-day Croatia, the whole of modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and the eastern part of Syrmia (Serbia). Of the 39,000 Jews who lived in the NDH in 1941, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum states that more than 30,000 were murdered. Of these, 6,200 were shipped to Nazi Germany and the rest of them were murdered in the NDH, the vast majority in Ustaše-run concentration camps, such as Jasenovac. The Ustaše were the only quisling forces in Yugoslavia who operated their own extermination camps for the purpose of murdering Jews and members of other ethnic groups.
Melita Švob is a Croatian Jewish biologist, scientist, and historian.
Samuel "Sami" David Alexander was a Croatian Jewish industrialist, doyen of Croatian industrialists, a philanthropist and a member of the Zagreb prominent Alexander family.
Jakov Bienenfeld was a Croatian entrepreneur and developer.
Vukovar Synagogue was the main synagogue of the Jewish community in Vukovar, Croatia, after the first smaller synagogue was sold to the Calvinist church in 1910. It was constructed in 1889 in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, within the Austria-Hungary.
Zdenka Rubinstein was a Croatian Jewish operatic soprano.
Mirko Breyer was a known Croatian writer, bibliographer and antiquarian.
Zdenko Blažeković was a Croatian fascist official who held several posts in the World War II Ustaše regime in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). He was the student commissar at the Ustaše University Centre (USS), leader of the male Ustaše Youth organisation and a sports commissioner in the NDH.
The Antisemitic Exhibition in Zagreb took place in the Art Pavilion in Zagreb, the capital city of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), in May 1942.
Kruščica was a concentration camp established and operated by the fascist, Croatian nationalist Ustaše movement near the town of Vitez, in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), between August and October 1941, during World War II.
Đakovo was an internment camp for Jewish, and to a lesser extent Serb, women and children in the town of Đakovo in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) that was operational between December 1941 and July 1942, during World War II.
The Tenja concentration camp was one of 26 concentration camps established in the Independent State of Croatia during World War II. It was located close to village of Tenja near Osijek and operated by Ustaše.
Balkan Jews refers to Jews who live or lived in the Balkans.
Ivo Rojnica was a Croatian Ustaše official and intelligence agent who was active in the World War II Axis puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) from 1941 to 1945. After the war, he escaped to Argentina, where he reinvented himself as a businessman and diplomat.
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